


Pancake Art

by Selenay



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: First Time, Fluff, M/M, Oblivious Phil Coulson, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-10
Updated: 2012-09-10
Packaged: 2017-11-14 00:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenay/pseuds/Selenay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil Coulson has a daily routine.</p><p>It's about to get changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pancake Art

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to cheer myself up after a fairly disastrous week so I wrote the most unashamedly fluffy fic that I could think of.

Phil Coulson had a routine.

Moving into the tower with the Avengers had changed his usual routine (Fury was a sneaky bastard who took advantage of him in a moment of morphine-induced distraction) but he had established a new one over the months. It was important. It signalled normalcy and helped him to compartmentalise his life.

That's what Phil told himself, anyway, although life with six superheroes wasn't exactly made for schedules or routines. Life in his apartment had been so much quieter. On good days, Phil might admit that it had been a bit too quiet. Then there were the days when the DVR judged him for his TV choices and Thor shorted out half the electrical outlets and someone put eggs that definitely weren't chicken eggs in the fridge. Those were the days when Phil vaguely wished for his old life back.

On weekdays, Phil's main focus was trying to see as little as possible of the Avengers outside of SHIELD HQ. It never worked and he somehow ended up eating dinner with Clint and at least one of the other residents most evenings.

Weekends were when Phil didn't mind living in the tower. If he was honest with himself, which he tried to be because his head was the only place that he could be completely honest, Saturday mornings were becoming the highlight of his week. Unless they had to Avenge something, save the world or corral someone's attempt to super-size their cats then Phil's Saturday morning had a pattern.

There was the standard get up, get showered and get dressed portion of the morning. Stark still pretended to be surprised that Phil owned casual pants and sweaters to wear at the weekend. It got less funny every week.

After checking with JARVIS on the status and location of the other residents (because sometimes they broke their routines and his Saturday never went so well with Stark blundering around the kitchen) Phil would head for the kitchen and get the coffee started. Stark and Banner had been banned from making improvements to kitchen appliances after the blender incident and Phil always checked the coffee bag before using it. Coffee that Phil had made never accidentally contained hallucinogenic substances, motor oil or rose petals.

The reports from those incidents were kept in a locked drawer in his desk labelled "Learning material for idiots".

There were a lot of reports in that drawer.

Fury didn't mind if Phil held some of his reports back from the main archive as long as they got written somewhere. Keeping auditors out of the more embarrassing reports was easier if they couldn't find them.

While the coffee machine was busy doing its thing, Phil would spend a few minutes with his tablet checking emails, overnight news reports and Stark's Twitter account. It was always best to know early what kind of damage control his day would require.

Then he could sit down with a cup of coffee and the paper to wait for his favourite part of the morning. 

So far, this Saturday was following his routine perfectly. He had coffee, he had the crossword and he had a perfect sight-line to the kitchen door. The idea that it might not go the way that he was expecting never entered his mind.

Right on cue, Phil's favourite part of the morning walked in.

Clint Barton was barely awake. His loose t-shirt and pyjama pants did nothing to disguise his arms or his ass and his hair stuck up in every direction. Phil hid his appreciative smile behind his cup of coffee. It was unlikely that Clint would notice it through the dazed haze of caffeine withdrawal, but it never paid to underestimate a man with such sharp vision.

Yawning, Clint poured coffee into the mug that Phil had set out for him and spent a minute leaning against the counter with his eyes closed, breathing in the steam.

Phil sometimes had fantasies about the expression of unadulterated pleasure that Clint wore during his first cup of coffee. It was completely inappropriate but he was only human.

Not that his appreciation of Clint's ass in a pair of thin pyjama pants was precisely appropriate either. It was just that Phil had a scale in his head of wrongness levels and the fantasies were definitely much worse so he gave himself a pass on the ass thing.

Apparently Phil's life with SHIELD had given him some world-class rationalisation skills when it came to his relationship with Clint.

When Clint had drunk half his coffee and refilled the mug, he shuffled over to the table and sat down opposite Phil. Every week Phil told himself that the way their legs brushed together when Clint stretched out was purely accidently. He wasn't sure that he believed himself anymore.

Phil silently handed over the sports pages, the cartoons and the Sudoku puzzle that he had carefully cut out and there was silence in the kitchen for a while apart from the rustle of newspaper.

It was peaceful and quiet and entirely unlike just about every other part of life living with the Avengers. Phil had always enjoyed quiet mornings with Clint when safe houses and ops had allowed, even before his feelings became more complicated. Or maybe that had been a symptom of his feelings before he actually acknowledged them. It was impossible to tell because everything seemed to bleed across between the professional and personal with them.

Eventually Phil raised his coffee mug only to find it empty. He offered Clint a refill while he was at the pot and reminded himself as always that Clint's grateful smile was just for the coffee.

"Hungry?" Clint asked as Phil poured the coffee. "I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry," Phil said.

"I'm a growing boy," Clint said cheerfully. "Got to keep my strength up."

Phil barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Mug in hand, Clint bounced to his feet and opened the fridge, all signs of sleepiness gone.

"Pancakes or waffles?" Clint asked.

"Pancakes sound good." Phil leaned against the counter and absolutely did not stare at Clint's ass. Well, maybe for a moment, but he was still only human. "Unless you'd prefer waffles?"

Clint leaned further into the fridge. "Nah, pancakes are good." He turned to look at Phil over his shoulder. "I can even make smiley faces if you want."

"I outgrew smiley faces forty years ago," Phil said.

"Nobody ever outgrows smiley faces." Clint straightened up and waved authoritatively with the egg carton. "Ever."

Somehow, assembling all the ingredients seemed to involve a lot of leaning around and sometimes on Phil. It never seemed to matter where he stood in the kitchen, Clint always needed things that were just behind, above or on the other side of Phil. They did this dance every week and Phil reminded himself each time that Clint was just careless about personal space, it didn't mean anything. 

Remembering that wasn't easy when Clint reached around to grab a spatula and somehow pressed his entire body against Phil's, his warm breath brushing Phil's ear, but Phil repeated the mantra in his head anyway.

"So, where is everyone?" Clint asked casually as he mixed batter.

"According to JARVIS, everywhere except here," Phil said.

"Huh." There was a small smile on Clint's face. "Guess nobody else will want pancakes."

Phil shrugged. "Looks like it's just us for breakfast today."

Clint's smile widened and acquired an evil edge. "Excellent."

"No smiley faces."

"Solemnly swear, no smile faces. Sir."

There were no smiley faces.

There were hearts, flowers and even something that looked like a mutilated unicorn, but no smiley faces.

Clint smirked as he set the plate down in front of Phil and offered him the bottle of syrup.

"Do we need to discuss your ability to follow orders?" Phil asked, pouring himself a small measure and handing the bottle back.

Clint shrugged and drowned his pancakes in sticky syrup. "I followed orders. No smiley faces. If you wanted boring round pancakes, you should have been more specific."

"I'll remember that the next time we discuss how you complete your reports."

"You only told me to use a pen. You didn't specify colour or type."

Phil allowed a smile to twitch at the corners of his mouth. "I didn't think that I'd need to tell you not to use a purple glitter pen."

"You've got to admit, my reports are always the prettiest."

"I don't give marks for presentation."

There was a hint of wickedness in Clint's smile now. "If you graded and rewarded us for our reports, I'd definitely try a bit harder."

"I'm not authorising new equipment for you based on your ability to fill out a five page incident report."

"Yeah, I was thinking of something else." Clint pushed his half-finished plate away and stood up. "No equipment necessary. Fun sometimes, but not actually critical."

Phil's mouth suddenly went dry because, between Clint's words and the way that he was prowling around the table (prowling seductively while wearing a Daffy Duck t-shirt took talent), he was starting to rethink a few things. Mostly, he was reconsidering his certainty that Clint's recent personal space issues were accidental.

There was just a hint of question in Clint's eyes when as he leaned down and then Phil was being kissed slowly and deliberately. Phil could taste maple on Clint's lips and there was a slight tremor in the hand resting on Phil's shoulder. Part of his brain shut down and did a small victory dance, but the rest of his brain was busy trying to decide whether he was awake or having a particularly vivid dream.

Clint pulled away and studied Phil for a long, breathless moment. A wide grin spread across Clint's face and he chuckled.

"Seriously, this was a surprise?" There was joking outrage in Clint's voice. "I've done everything except stencil 'please can we fuck now' across my forehead and you're still surprised?"

Phil pinched his leg. Definitely awake. He shrugged and tried to match Clint's light tone. "You were sending out confusing signals."

Clint gave him a deeply unimpressed look. "I thought that I was giving pretty straight-forward signals."

"Straight-forward is asking a guy out for coffee," Phil said.

"I made you pancakes."

"You make everyone pancakes."

"Only when I can't bribe Natasha to take them out for breakfast."

Phil frowned as he remembered how many times they'd had breakfast together, alone, on a Saturday morning since he'd moved into the tower. Then he counted all the times that Clint had cooked dinner, met him at the door with coffee and invited him to the team movie night.

His eyes narrowed.

"Have you, by any chance, been dating me for the last few months?" Phil asked levelly.

Clint winced. "Um. Yes?"

"You know that you're supposed to tell someone when you're dating them, don't you?" Phil said. "It's usually considered good etiquette for both parties to know that they're in a relationship."

"I thought you'd work it out without me having to tell you?"

"Contrary to popular opinion, I am not a mind-reader."

"That's probably a good thing, to be honest. I've had some very detailed fantasies about you." Clint paused and looked hopeful. "So, now that you know we're dating, do you want to get some coffee some time?"

Trying to stay casual, Phil said, "We could do coffee."

His breath caught in his throat at Clint's happy smile. It was unbelievably charming. This was much better than any of the dreams he had been having.

"How many coffee dates do we need?" Clint asked.

Phil raised an eyebrow and a moment later found himself with a lapful of Clint, who now wore a smug expression as he straddled Phil's thighs. The chair creaked alarmingly but didn't collapse. Clint draped his arms loosely around Phil's neck and leaned in close enough for Phil to feel every breath on his lips.

"I meant," Clint said, "how many coffee dates do we need to have before I'm allowed to take you to bed. Phil."

Phil kissed him because it seemed a shame to waste such a golden opportunity. He kept it light and undemanding and couldn't help smiling at the small sound of protest Clint made when the kiss ended.

"Three coffee dates," Phil said and swallowed as Clint rolled his hips with a wicked smile. "Of course, three coffee dates could be considered equal to one dinner date."

Clint's smile turned triumphant. "Can I take you to dinner tonight?"


End file.
